XBox 360… Laptop

I’m posting this a little early because it’s gonna be popular. Ben Heckendorn has been up to his tricks again. This time he built a 14 pound, water cooled 17 inch XBox 360 aluminum cased laptop. It’s got all the outputs you could ever need. This one is very good. He was kind enough to write up the build and do a nice photo shoot. Oh, this is very, very nice.

i just wish it had some battery power, and i also wish microsoft spent more than ten seconds on the efficiency of this machine. the heat output alone of this beast could melt some solder unless there is some thermal shutoff i’m not aware of (perhaps the chip smasher has a thermal switch we’ve never heard of)

i also just wanted to post this so the comments box sticks with my new email

I have been a long time reader of hack a day and a member of the benheck forums for a year and a half, and this thing beats every other portable made (some get pretty close, the 360p loses a bit from no batteries, but no biggie). And steve, you are a moron. thats it, you are a moron. you couldn’t even make a gameboy portable, much less a 360p.

what sort of hack is this this is hack a day bring some reel hacks this is not one whoever came up with this needs to find a reeal hack and stop posting this rubbish in britain you dont find this rubbish

nice, but i would have opted for a keyboard-less monitor mounted contraption. Less portable but better suited for it’s usage. Still, I think there’s money to be made doing that. Not so expensive for a gaming laptop/ media viewer at all.

If only the 360 weren’t so bulky and hot. Reminds me: the (late) psx’s form factor was perfect. Sexy thing…

another cool hack from ben. been following his portables for quite some time and love every one of them. to the haters, this guy has made a portable of every major console to date and seems like a really nice, down to earth guy… his writeups are always amusing.

Love the hack!!! Not that it takes away one bit, but I have a few things I wonder why he didn’t do:

1) Slim DVD drive?2) The radiator could have been much smaller if smaller copper plates had been used. Would probably make it lighter too. JBWeld is also an insulator, sodering the plates would probably have helped a lot.3) Epoxying the watercooling stuff to help prevent leaks?4) Maybe with a slim DVD and a smaller, more efficient radiator he could have fit a battery in there?

Anyway… As a said before none of that takes away from the accomplishment one bit. I know I couldn’t do a hack half as hardcore as that. Seriously 1337.

1. glad to see comments are alive again2. they new skin looks like crap

In any case, great hack… I will admit water cooling was a little, umm, bold… Why not use heatpipes? In the time he spent debugging the watercooling he could have probably mastered them; and they don’t leak ;)

And I think you could have found a slightly more elegant power cord solution… With the $$$$ you spent on this, seems like a decent connector should have been in the budget…

Also, if I were to build this I would have dumped the flip screen and just mounted the screen in the top (ie tablet style) and dumped the keyboard. Just include a usb port and keep a keyboard in your car… That should have greatly simplified the build… I would have made it slightly larger so that you could fit the power supply in the box… Just an IEC power cord on the back.

As to battery power… The battery in my laptop is good for 50w/hrs and weighs just under a pound. If you wanted 2hrs of play time and the xbox was drawing the 200w That is only 10 batteries… (with derating for the high current draw) So you can go from 20lbs to 30lbs and have a portable xbox360… And of course you could make it detachable…

omfg, wow thats so 1337, that is truly a hack worthy of hackaday, crazy lol, roxors. though i do preffer the ps3, it is much more efficient, uses its cpu has 7 (actually 8) cores, each at 533Mhz, running a t a lowwer speed, with multiple cores is better than running 3 cores (in the 360) at a high speed

I just got done reading the whole thing and I am just blown away.I don’t even play game consoles, but I have hacked some hardware in my day and that is just one beautifully executed project.Common sense approaches combined with technical grace.

Brillant, I’ve felt the heat comming off of one them things, so i figure about two deep cycle marine batteries should be good for about 5 minutes of play time:) btw this is what hackaday is all about. ps. needs some leds.

omg that damn thing is so freaking sweet this dude should sell all his mods he would make a fortune all peep out my newest console its called Pirate Evolution and it is playable…… happy hacking asuka out

Really really cool. You have managed to squeeze everything into it. Great finish too though I would probably combine the power cables into one. An internal battery would be useful and I would have ditched the water cooling (too expensive and too unsafe). Fans at the sides would allow air to circulate more and better. Good Job, best I have seen yet!

what is the point what a wast of money i could do this but whats the point microsoft build them so why do this its only Â£150 for a LCD screen i know it would of cost a lot more than that to make this maybe if you put a BAT init it would be worth it but what you did if a wast of money iv work for microsoft in the past and new they were playing this and no the ins and outs of this system and i have my own and have the fan stand and intercooler and my xbox 306 gives out cold air no hot not even warm air and it works fine not one crash or even a frezz up its grt ok iv said what i wanted to say lattas